Continued uncertainty in the economy has forced CEOs to focus almost all of their attention on revenues and profitability. In many ways, the recent economic challenges served to shine a spotlight on workforce management issues.

Whether navigating layoffs, reducing labor costs, cross-training employees, or simply keeping workforce morale up, many leaders found that their organizations were not as nimble or flexible as they would like. So here's a look at what the CEO needs from HR today and how features in Sage HRMS can help.

Recruiting and Staffing Executives typically avoid the details of day-to-day human resources issues, preferring to take a broader perspective. The CEO needs to know the big picture of what is going on with recruiting. How many openings are available? Is that creating any backlogs in production? What will it cost to fill the positions? A staffing report from Sage HRMS features a nice overview without getting into the individual details of each hiring decision or new vacancy. It should also include positions filled, turnover rates, cost per hire, and difficult-to-fill positions with strategies for overcoming the obstacles.

Turnover and Succession Planning Uncertain economic times often results in changes in the workforce. So Executives need help from HR in modeling scenarios for changes such as layoffs or promotions, identifying worst performers, creating career development and retention plans for top performers, and planning succession for mission-critical positions in the event of an unexpected departure.

Your staffing report to the C-Suite should include the percentage of turnover your company is experiencing each month. It's an easy way for the CEO to spot worrisome trends, like a spike in employee resignations.

Compensation Every manager worries about turnover of their top performers and wants to pay them more, while avoiding the cost of paying too much to underachievers. The CEO needs help from HR to determine how to compensate employees at a rate that is equal to their value to the organization. It's important to provide comparative analysis for your industry, geographic location, and your competitors pay for key positions. Are you paying attractive wages - based on competition, geographic location, and cost of living - to retain your top performing employees? Can you "enhance total compensation" without adding a lot of extra cost?

Benefits To plan for business growth and maintain profitability, the CEO needs to be able to project both revenues and costs as accurately as possible for next year and beyond. Unfortunately for HR, legislative change and rising healthcare costs create a lot of uncertainty around benefit costs. Even still, it's important to help executives get an idea of the big picture and provide some meaningful metrics on benefit costs per employee. It's important that your Sage HRMS reports include the cost of things like healthcare, retirement and savings plans, life insurance, tuition reimbursement, and auto expenses.

What the CEO Needs From HR Get all the facts about how you can use Sage HRMS to help the CEO make better-informed decision about your workforce with this 9-page guide.